Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Shipwreck stories of the bay

Going, going, gone ... Vin Maskell reports there are almost 200 sunken ships in the waters of Port Phillip Bay.

WHEN the party hire boat the Maheno sank near the mouth of the Yarra River two weeks before Christmas, it joined a long list of vessels that have come to grief in the not-so-benign waters of Port Phillip Bay, not far from the beaches that Melburnians flock to over summer.

Heritage Victoria estimates there are 130 shipwrecks in the bay, with a further 50 at the narrow Port Phillip Heads between Point Lonsdale and Point Nepean. In the bay itself, these include the 19th-century warship HMVS Cerberus, an 1890s wooden pleasure yacht, cargo boats and passenger ferries.

Five people died when the steel steamer the Kakariki collided with another steamer, the Caradale, off Williamstown at 11pm on January 29, 1937. The Kakariki sank within minutes and later salvage operations were hampered by the vessel being stuck in four metres of mud.

Eventually, like many other wrecks, the boat was blown up, but diver Peter Taylor, a member of the Maritime Archaeology Association of Victoria, has found some remains: parts of the mast, the bridge and the bow.

Mr Taylor has been fascinated by local shipwrecks for more than 30 years, ever since he came across parts of the Albert William while diving just off the Williamstown back beach.

The Albert William, built in 1863, hit a reef at Point Gellibrand in 1955 while on its way from Melbourne to Geelong with a cargo of wool.

"You can still dive and see parts of the Albert William," Mr Taylor says. "You can make out parts like the clipper bow, the anchor chain and a few fittings. You can recognise it as having once been a boat.

"Every wreck has a human story to tell, and while no lives were lost when the Albert William went down, its sinking meant that the family that lived on the boat no longer had a home."

One of Mr Taylor's fondest shipwreck stories if that of the Henrietta, built in 1918. Having sailed around the world and in many treacherous seas, the Henrietta, a cod-fishing boat from the US, sank off Point Cook in 1940.

A few months later, its skipper died in a plane crash at Parkes, NSW. That same weekend, a storm broke up the Henrietta. The skipper's ashes, and later his wife's, were scattered nearby. The Henrietta remained undisturbed until 1967, when an abalone diver located the wreck. All that's left now is the boat's nameboard, which adorns the entrance to a museum in Altona, and a 90-tonne pile of pig-iron ballast in three metres of water, 400 metres offshore.

The best-known Melbourne shipwreck is the HMVS Cerberus, off Black Rock. The 1870 warship is clearly visible in Half Moon Bay. It is also dangerous and out of bounds to the public. Scuttled in 1926 to form a breakwater, the wreck has been deteriorating rapidly since 1993.

Heritage Victoria's Cassandra Philippou says the Cerberus is a shipwreck protected zone and "could suffer a third catastrophic collapse at any time".

"Heritage Victoria is happy to provide location details for people to access most shipwreck sites," says Ms Philippou, a maritime archaeologist. "There are only a few sites in Victoria that are only accessible by permit, and this is usually to give those sites added protection as they are fragile and very significant."

Experienced divers may be able to find traces of the Isis, a yacht that sank off Frankston in 1940, and the Uralba, a wooden steamer, eight kilometres off Carrum.

Closer to the city there's the J7 submarine in Sandringham and an unknown wreck a few hundred metres off Point Ormond at Elwood. Just west of Port Melbourne's Station Pier are remains of what might be the Nairana, a Bass Strait ferry steamer that had a million passengers in its lifetime.

Built in Scotland in 1917, the Nairana was originally a sea-plane carrier. Before it lost its moorings during a storm in February 1951 and blew ashore, it had been laid up at anchor at Port Melbourne for three years.

Mr Taylor is confident "the bits and pieces of steel" on the shore of the Garden City beach is the Nairana, but Heritage Victoria is yet to confirm the identity of the remains.

Ms Philippou points out that the remains of shipwrecks are not necessarily romantic, or even easy to recognise.

"Many old boats were scuttled or dumped at places such as what is now the Jawbone Marine Sanctuary off Williamstown. All you might find there, in two or three metres of water, are straight lines among the reef, suggesting archaeological rather than natural features."

Mr Taylor peels away some of the romance, too, when he notes that cargo vessels were the equivalent of today's semi-trailers. But instead of being carted off to wrecker's yards, many boats just rotted on the bed of the bay.

Nowadays, sunken boats are more likely to be refloated and salvaged, such as the Maheno.

And while Mr Taylor and his colleagues at the Maritime Archaeology Association of Victoria have found many remains of old boats, some wrecks prove to be elusive. For 20 years Mr Taylor has been looking for the Thames, a steamer that was run ashore in rough weather at Altona in February 1852, a decision that saved the lives of its passengers.

The sea still has many secrets.

Heritage Victoria runs internationally accredited maritime archaeology courses for divers and non-divers. The next course is scheduled for February 2-3 and will cost $165. Inquiries: heritage.vic.gov.au

The Maritime Archaeology Association of Victoria has extensive reports of its projects. Visit: home.vicnet.net.au/~maav/index.htm